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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Happy birthday, Mary Shelley

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I’m recycling a post from a few years ago about Mary Shelley, whose birthday it is today.


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on this day in 1797, the daughter of radicals Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Well-educated and not particularly happy at home (there was some friction between Mary and her stepmother Mary Jane Clairmont), it was only natural that when a handsome young poet showed up, she’d fall in love and run off with him. Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, who later had a torrid affair with Byron, accompanied them to Europe.

Shelley already had a wife, Harriet, but these were the heady days of sex, opium, and the sonata form. Godwin, his radical sexual politics put to the test, became estranged from his daughter.

In the summer of 1816, Shelley, Mary, and Byron were in Switzerland and it was there, in response to a challenge to tell the best ghost story, Mary started to write Frankenstein. After Shelley’s death in 1822 she returned to England and supported herself as a writer until her death in 1851, penning short stories, essays, poems, and reviews, and several other novels.

I’m not doing justice at all to Mary’s adventurous, unconventional, and sad life, so I encourage you to read a book that does–Passion by Jude Morgan. It’s about the women who became entangled with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, beautifully written, and with a wonderfully strong sense of time and place. It’s also a very sad book–if you know anything at all about these people, you’ll know everything ended badly, particularly for the women.

Have you read this book or any other book, fictional or biographical, about the Godwins, Mary, Shelley, Byron et al? Do you have any recommendations?

In blatant self promotion, you can enter a contest at Goodreads to win a copy of Hidden Paradise, which recently got this wonderful review at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Go for it.

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged | 5 Replies

Accessory Vices

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A few days ago I went into DSW to the clearance section looking to see if I could replace some everyday sandals that have gotten a bit ratty this summer. I didn’t find my sandals, but I came out with these. They begged me to take them home with me; they fit, they’re my favorite color and they’re sparkly. Just right for running around Price Chopper!
I don’t know if I would have had a shoe thing during the Regency. Ladies’ shoes tended to be simple, kind of like ballet flats we might wear now. Here is an example from the Northampton Central Museum, found on the footwear page at Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion (one of my favorite online resources on Regency costume). These shoes are circa 1810 and leather, so not quite as delicate as they might look. Styles became plainer (and more round-toed) as the era progressed. Although flats are cute, there is just not enough variety for me to want to collect them.
I suspect that hats were the accessory vice of choice for many Regency ladies. However, many styles of hat that I like on other people don’t look good on me. So I rarely wear hats, but when I do, I have a simple crocheted wool hat for winter and a straw cloche for summer. I wouldn’t be able to pull off any of these elaborate styles from 1811. I’d end up wearing something small and simple. Cute, but one or two would be enough.
So my vice of choice would probably be jewelry. I probably have even more pairs of earrings than shoes, though that isn’t as expensive as it  sounds. I like costume jewelry best; it’s often as pretty as the “real” stuff and I don’t have to fret about losing it.
During the Regency, I think I would be happy with paste and pinchbeck. Paste was the term for a type of glass that was cut to resemble gemstones. It takes a better eye than mine to distinguish the stones in these earrings from diamonds.
Pinchbeck was an alloy of base metals that looks enough like gold to please me. I’ve long admired this set of earrings from www.georgianjewelry.com, one of my favorite places to window shop for my heroines.
Do you have any accessory vices? If you were a Regency heroine, how would you spend your pin-money?
Elena
Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Replies

Welcome Syrie James

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I’m thrilled today to welcome Syrie James, one of my favorite Austenesque authors. Syrie is giving away a copy of her latest book, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, to one person who comments today.

SSyrie JamesAuthorPhoto2011 - Credit William Jamesyrie James is the bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels, including The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë, Dracula My Love, Nocturne, Forbidden, and The Harrison Duet: Songbird and Propositions. Her books have been translated into eighteen foreign languages. In addition to her work as a novelist, she is a screenwriter, a member of the Writers Guild of America, and a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California. Connect with her on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Syrie’s talking about a subject close to the Riskies’ hearts today–research. Take it away, Syrie….

The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie JamesI had done a great deal of Austen and Regency era research when I wrote my novel The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, an education which has been enhanced over the years by additional reading and by JASNA’s many fun and informative conferences and meetings. I’d visited England many times including a wonderful, self-guided Jane Austen tour several years before.

To add to that background, I paid great attention to the story structure, character types, character arcs, locations, situations, and themes of Austen’s novels, to ensure that the book would fit within her canon, and be the kind of novel she might have written. I immersed myself in research about life in the Regency era. I pored over the annotated versions of Austen’s novels edited by David M. Shapard, finding valuable information about the world and the language in the annotations themselves. I re-read Jane Austen’s letters again and again, because they are full of a wealth of small details.

The novel also required research into a variety of additional subjects related to specific aspects of the story. I found a friend and Londoner who was kind enough to research obscure facts for me, such as clerical stipends and the cost of nineteenth-century bell forging. She also read the first draft of the manuscript to make sure it didn’t contain any egregious Americanisms.

For the modern day story, I worked with a doctor to hammer out and verify the medical details, such as Mary I. Jesse’s condition, the subplot regarding Samantha’s doctor boyfriend, and the back story regarding her mother’s illness. I worked with a university Special Collections Librarian to understand Samantha’s current occupation, and with an English professor to gain insight into Samantha’s teaching background.

I contacted Oxford University for details regarding their doctoral program. I researched the sales records for the most expensive manuscripts ever sold. I studied the way sales are conducted at Sotheby’s Auction House. And of course I continued to re-read Austen’s novels the entire time I was writing, to keep her voice in my head!

Question of the day–what’s YOUR ideal research trip?

Update: Entries open until Saturday 12 midnight EST.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Jane Austen, Research | Tagged , | 15 Replies

GRAVE MATTERS

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An add from The Wooler’s British Gazette in 1822 (partial text)*:

 

“Many hundred dead bodies will be dragged from their wooden coffins this winter, for the anatomical lectures (which have just commenced)…the only safe coffin is Bridgman’s Patent Wrought-iron one… Those undertakers who have IRON COFFINS must divide the profits of the funeral with EDWARD LILLIE BRIDGMAN.”*

It seemed that the bodies of executed prisoners was in short supply, forcing surgeons and students to seek bodies by other means. This meant that if one were interred in an ordinary wooden coffin, there was a good chance that the churchyard would not be one’s final resting place.

Physicians were willing to pay a good price for dead bodies, and hence the growth of the business of the “Resurrection Men.” A body snatcher could deal his way to a higher price by threatening to sell his bodies elsewhere. On occasion, a particularly interesting specimen could bring a pretty penny…in 1783 a young Irish Giant named Charles Byrne, in the process of dying and having heard that his body was desired by a Scots surgeon named John Hunter, took every precaution to insure the safety of his body after death–but Hunter at last parted with the outrageous bribe of L500 to obtain Byrne’s body. If you would like an even more ghoulish note, so frightened was Hunter that his prize would be stolen from him in turn that he immediately boiled the flesh from Byrne’s body in the dead of night and preserved the skeleton.**

Obviously, moonlight was not the friend of the body snatcher. Complete darkness was needed to carry out the work. Additionally, it became necessary to have a scout at the gravesite, at the end of services, to spot any traps…then once it was dark, the robbers quickly dug down to the head-end of the coffin, broke through and pulled the body out head-first, disturbing the site as little as possible. One disposed of the grave-clothes also, as the punishment for being caught with a corpse wearing grave clothes was much greater than being caught with a naked body.***

But graveyards were not the only source of bodies, particularly as the demand grew and graveyards became more guarded. Bodies were obtained by subterfuge from workhouses and such places…and eventually, even by murder.

A murderous pair named John Bishop and James May worked London’s East End in 1831 until a suspicious surgeon called the police. They were tried and convicted, and their own executed bodies were delivered for dissection. **** Unfortunately for them, or perhaps because of them, the Anatomy Act passed short months later, doing away with the practice of giving the bodies of the executed to the executioner for disposal. Eventually, the practice of donating bodies for medical practice and research lost its negative connotation, and the “Resurrectionists” went out of business.

So there’s a spooky bit of history for the season…Happy Halloween!

Laurie

*Low, Donald A., The Regency Underworld (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999) p. 77
**Ibid p. 80
***Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993) p. 254
****Hughes, Kristine. Everyday LifeVictoriancy and vicCincinnatiand (Cincinnatti: Writer’s Digest Books, 1998) p. 65

 

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged | 5 Replies

Are They . . . Or Aren’t They?

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This year, my son is going out trick or treating for Halloween dressed as the Grim Reaper. Apropos of nothing, but it does demonstrate the allure the Dark Side* has, even for six year-old boys (maybe especially for six year-old boys).

Villains. In some romances, villains are two-dimensional characters set on one thing (Revenge/Rape/Disgrace/Financial Gain/Name Your Poison). They are obvious in their intentions to everyone but the oblivious hero and/or heroine, and they are what makes some well-written love stories go down the tubes for me.

And you would think writing about evil would be so easy! And fun, too! After all, Milton spends oodles of time writing about Satan, and Satan comes off as much sexier and fun than the other guy. Satan talks about his choice of Hell as a residence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, that serve in heav’n

For me, the best villains are those characters whom you can’t tell are villainous from their first appearance on the page. What are their motivations? How will they attempt to achieve them? And then, when the book is over and all is revealed, you can reflect on how the villain fooled everyone, including the reader. Shakespeare says it better than I do:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Villains who end up being heroes or vice versa appear in Edith Layton’s False Angel and The Duke’s Wager, Mary Jo Putney’s The Diabolical Baron, Falling For Chloe by Diane Farr, Lady Sophia’s Lover by Lisa Kleypas, Bliss by Judy Cuevas . . . the list goes on and on (for more villains, check out All About Romance’s Special Titles Listing on Villains, which gives details about who becomes a hero/heroine in subsequent books).

I think that uncertainty is why we are fascinated by Harry Potter’s Professor Snape (the six year-old and I are reading Prisoner of Azkaban now), as well as Gollum from LOTR. My own private obsession, HBO’s Deadwood, features a masterful villain in the character of Al Swearingen–he’s murdered, stolen, and lied, not to mention swearing all the time, and yet there are times when you root for him.


Villainy can be scandalously sexy.

Which is why, this Halloween, you’ll be seeing many more devils**, witches, vampires, and werewolves than Good Samaritans, pilgrims progressing, Mother Theresa, and Gandhi.

Thanks for coming over to the Dark Side with me for a moment,

Megan

*Cara, I promise I had nothing to do with my son wanting to dress in a long, black robe.
**After six years of being a witch, my son made me switch to dressing as a lady-devil. I bought my red sequin horns, tail and pitchfork yesterday.

Posted in Reading, Research, Writing | Tagged | 7 Replies